


Fireworks

by Nightalp



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, attempt at fluff, fireworks-feels, more plot than I wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:44:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightalp/pseuds/Nightalp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dating an asgardian god several thousand years older than you means there are a lot of things you can get wrong.<br/>Doesn’t mean you can’t set them right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by looking up at a lot of fireworks while still having frostiron-feels ...  
> hope you like
> 
> Happy New Year to you all

The StarkIndustries Sylvester-Party was always one of the greatest parties New York had to offer - a wide variety of food from all continents, the best drinks money could buy, music to dance or to sway or to speak by and a lot of people one wanted to be seen with. When Tony had been young and had managed to sneak in after his mother send him to bed - Tony had never been allowed to the party, and he had always been there since his sixth birthday - he had always admired the dresses the people wore: StarkIndustries Sylvester-Party was something of a costumes-feast, with women wearing pink dresses and cat ears, and men dressed up in black suits with small horns that suggested they were fauns (Tony hadn’t understood that when he was small and had thought all these men wanted to be demons; his mother had laughed when he had told her and said they were certainly going at it with much fire.)

After the accident in which his parents died Obadiah Stane managed the party, and it was the first time Tony was allowed there. He was fifteen then, and quickly discovered that without the attraction of doing something forbidden this party was boring as hell, too. Half of the persons there thought him a kid, and the other half admired him with lustful glances he couldn’t appreciate at this time in his life. He stayed until he was sure that there was no-one to have a decent conversation with - it took him around half an hour to understand that the few persons that could actually keep up with him thought him a maybe-brilliant, but still unformed kid - then he meandered to the bar where he got himself drunk in public for the first time.

It wasn’t the last, by far.

The following years nothing changed but that _Anthony Stark_ became a name the people came to knew, and the scientists actually _talked_ to him. Oh, and that he never left a party without at least two, sometimes up to five women and men in tow to fuck them until the morning dawned and he could go on creating a more secure world.

It wasn’t bleak, not for him, but he certainly never even questioned it until Afghanistan and the first party after that, the party Pepper organized and that he didn’t leave to tumble into bed with some strangers but to stay awake with the woman, sitting in the adjoining room and talking about everything his slightly boozed brain could think of.

It was the first New-Year-Party he actually enjoyed. Not sneaking around in shadows or under tables as he had done as a kid, trying to be invisible until his mother came to wake him up a few minutes before midnight to see the fireworks. Not hiding in corners and pouring his charm at the younger of the female guests as he had done as adolescent. Not drowning his loneliness in alcohol and sex as he did later. Just talking and being with someone he admired.

Of course it didn’t last. The next year they welcomed the New Year’s eve as a couple, then there was the year with the storm that delayed Pepper’s plane so she had to celebrate on a airport somewhere too far away (and alone; she had forbidden him to leave the party in his suit to celebrate with her, and for once he had listened which he swore he would never, ever do) and the year after that they weren’t an item anymore.

So, okay, he still celebrated with her, but even though he didn’t get himself drunk or headed off with some stranger, they also barely saw each other and certainly didn’t sit together after to talk about ... everything, really.

And then, when he thought his life couldn’t become even lower ... it didn’t. It got better.

As in Loki - and Thor was really surprised to discover his brother wan’t dead; the other of them ... not so - coming to earth every now and then and instead of wreaking havoc as they had expected ... invited Tony to coffee.

He had been suspicious - who wouldn’t - when he had first had the god sit down across from him at the table in Tony’s favorite Starbucks, clad in a tight jeans and a really good looking shirt, and offering him his favorite coffee, iced in the summer heat. He even took care to not offer it to Tony directly, but to put it on the table between them which Tony found a bit ... disturbing.

Tony hadn’t taken him up on that offer, but Loki didn’t look too upset, especially after Tony - master of bad life choices - had talked back to him and they ended up chatting rather nicely about the unworthiness of humans.

It took five dates - no, not dates; Tony refused to call them dates until they were well past their fourth month - until Tony allowed Loki to buy him a drink, and he quickly got even and took the god out for a dinner. It became something of a game between them, and when it became colder, and they changed their ice-coffees for hot ones, he invited Loki to his New-Year-Party.

It took him around two hours after Loki left that he thought he had made a mistake, and the thought hit him - literally - full on his arm with the strength of Thor’s fist.

So, after he had assured Thor that he wasn’t hurt he went out to arrange for a flight out to Malibu, and a quiet evening for two, which should be preferable for a god who had once looked quiet scared due to thunder rumbling around him. 

It went well, went really well - Loki seemed to like the beach and actually dragged him out into the cold water for a naked nightly swim, then teleported his shivering body up and concerned covered him in blankets and filled him up with hot tea and left-over mulled wine until he was warm again - until Tony turned the TV on and they watched the clock tick down the countdown - Loki amused about the humans’ enthusiasm about this simple date change - and than, point 12, the fireworks started.

As Tony had predicted, Loki had freaked out.

He just had been wrong about the reason.

Looking at the colored lights drawn into the night sky his eyes shone with the wonder of a child, and when Tony told him, hesitatingly, that there weren’t any near, that he had chosen Malibu precisely because there weren’t any here ... Loki vanished. 

Just vanished.

 

It took two months for Loki to make another appearance, and he was still not wholly over the happenings of the night of New Year’s eve.

Tony meanwhile had found that he had come to like the god’s almost weekly visits, that he missed the witty conversations he had with him, the dark humor, the shared dislike of fathers and just. plan. the other’s. presence.

So he made a point of apologizing for the misunderstanding, gifted him with a book he thought Loki would like and let himself be taken out for dinner.

After that they continued as the had before, and when Tony was a bit more careful in what he assumed Loki would like or not - and actually asked the god if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure - neither of them mentioned it.

And then the next December came. Since Loki refused to celebrate Christmas with him - he wasn’t fond of the idea of celebrating the birth of a different god than him, and Tony’s explanation that a lot of people only took it as a feast of love nowadays didn’t help - there was only Sylvester Tony had to plan for.

And he did plan. Oh, how he did plan - he had plans upon plans, and in the end he rejected them all. Because he knew that no plan, however carefully chosen and carried out, could help him with the trickster.

So he just awaited the other at the door, gave him a drink and then lead him in. Showed him around, introduced him to some of the people - the ones he could stand, mostly, and some he thought Loki might like. After a while he almost felt forgotten, but every time he wandered off it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes for Loki to be by his side again, gently swaying against him, a cool body in the heat inside (not even Jarvis could keep the temperature at a point where it was comfortable for everyone, not when it would rise with a fast beat on the dance floor, and drop again not much later).

And then, when the waiters went around to fill everyone glasses, Tony took Loki up to his balcony, filled him a glass with the finest champagne himself, and laid an arm around the other’s waist. Jarvis was quietly counting the last seconds down, and then, at last ...

“Happy New Year!”, he said, bumping his glass against Loki’s and smiling when his gift filled the god’ face with wonder:

Rockets went up all around them, filled the night sky with their light - green palms, red and gold star showers, silver and blue sparkles. There were other fireworks as well, smaller ones like the fountain that sprayed gold and green everywhere, and red spinning-tops that showered the floor with sparkles. The men Tony had hired even managed to put together a way to ignite a round of sparklers along the balcony. 

There were other light as well, lights meant for the people beneath them that only watched from the windows, and they were far nearer, looked to be almost directly above their heads, as if they could be touched if they only wanted.

Loki looked at that all with wide eyes. The darkness of the night and his own hair cast his face in shadows, but the light of the fireworks mirrored in the dark orbs, made them shine like a kid’s on Christmas’ eve. Beneath the thunder of the exploding rockets Tony could hear the fast and excited breath of his god, could hear when it hitched every time a especially beautiful flower was cast upon the sky.

After some time the lights around them receded, left the dark night sky with a reddish cloud through which only a very few stars could shine. Still, Loki stood there as if he could still see the lights that had blossomed there for the last hour or so, the head tilted back and the eyes wide open.

Cold had crept under Tony’s cardigan, and he felt himself shiver - but it wasn’t the cold, not fully. The fireworks might have ceased, but there was still a light there on the balcony - a dim golden light, illuminating Loki’s dark-suited form, highlighting the pale face and the white, still uncovered shirt he wore, while leaving the the tight black trousers and the dark hair almost fully covered in shadows.

Tony had never believed in gods - had never believed in Thor’s and Loki’s claim that they were gods - but standing here, on a cold dark balcony in the presence of something so otherworldly, so beautiful, so distant ... it was enough to make him believe.

Loki turned as if he could hear Tony’s thoughts, and while there shouldn’t have been a light to mirror his eyes still gleamed when they rested on Tony, his lips pulled into a smile.

“Thank you.”, he said, his voice silky and pure and like a knife through Tony’s thoughts. “That was wonderful.”

Tony smiled himself, felt embarrassment color his cheeks and tried to hide it by looking down on the floor. “That’s just because he went so upset last year.”, he tried to smooth over the situation.

Loki wouldn’t have that. “It was absolutely amazing, Anthony.”, he said, and then Tony felt the other’s arm around his waist, felt himself being pulled in against the god. 

Shivering he fell against the warmth - and he must have been really cold for Loki to appear warm - and snuggled his nose against the other’s neck. “So, you won’t pull the disappearing act on me again?”, he asked, trying to hide the way he instinctively held his breath.

A quake went through Loki, then: “No, Anthony. I’m not disappearing on you again.”

And maybe it was only the answer to his question - but then, maybe, his question had been about more then today - but Tony thought he heard an unvoiced _Never again_ in the words and he felt his body relax against the frame of his lover.

 

StarkIndustries never again held a Sylvester-party that was _among the best_ of New York. Since that year, it always was the best (and there are people who say that a certain trickster god is fiddling with the fireworks, but no-one has ever bothered enough to confirm that).


End file.
